Getting a rough heading from the magnetometer

Now that we've got calibration settings, we can start using magnetometer readings to estimate where North is, like a compass. The words heading and yaw mean the same thing —which way we face relative to a reference point—in this case, magnetic North. Let's see how we can do this. Have a look at the following screenshot:

Figure 16.15 – Getting an approximate heading from the magnetometer

Figure 16.15 shows a method we will build. It takes the magnetometer with calibration data applied and uses atan2, as we did with the gyroscope to approximate the heading. We can also add a rough compass with it too.

Let's make this, as follows:

1. Create a plot_mag_heading.py file. Start with the imports, as follows:

   import vpython as vp
   from robot_imu import RobotImu
   from delta_timer import DeltaTimer
   import imu_settings

2. We can initialize the RobotImu with the settings, like this...